[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by eweissenbach

There are many many things that have drastically changed in my, and your, lifetime, including electronics, civil rights, air travel, space exprloration, communications, and on and on. However one of the most remarkable things to me is the culture of cigarrette smoking. When I was young in the late 40s and 50s, virtually every adult male I knew smoked, and many, if not most, adult females. I had an aunt and uncle who never smoked and I remember asking my mom (who occasionally smoked) why, thinking there was something wrong with uncle Elmer since he doesn't smoke. Smoking in ones home was virtually understood, and ashtrays were on almost every table. Even my nonsmoking aunt and uncle had ashtrays on their tables because all their family and friends smoked. If you went to a meeting, a sporting event, or any gathering of people, the smoke was heavy in the air. Go to any VFW or Eagles Lodge today and look at pictures on the wall of meetings from that era and half the people or more have a cigarrette in their hand. I remember coaches smoking on the sideline and butchers with a cigarrette in their mouth while cutting meat. I was a manager for New York Life when they came down with an edict that all offices were to be smoke-free beginning in about 1992, and I had several employees who I had to warn to go outside, that they could no longer smoke in their office. Now not only are smokers forced out of their offices, but all the way outside, and sometimes completely off campus or out of town. I know people who still smoke, though in my world it is becoming rarer and rarer, but even those that do don't smoke in their own homes. Today, if I walk into a home or a room that has been smoked in, I can instantly smell it, but never noticed it back then because everyplace apparently smelled like that. I saw Mike Huckabee speak several years ago about the importance of losing weight and getting healthier as a nation, and he said he was confident it could be done because he had seen it done with smoking over the last 60 years or so. It is an interesting phenomenon to me, that our world has changed in that fundamental way so drastically over the years.

You would be amazed at how many people still smoke in Europe.